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Aerosoft Maldives X The Malè Atolls Operating instructions

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Aerosoft Maldives X - The Malè Atolls 1.10
Page 1
Index
Index ................................................................................................................................................. 1
Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 2
System requirements ........................................................................................................................ 3
Credits ............................................................................................................................................... 3
Contact support ................................................................................................................................ 4
Removing the scenery ....................................................................................................................... 4
Performance and Display settings ...................................................................................................... 4
Autogenerated Scenery (Autogen) ..................................................................................................... 5
Air Taxi Traffic ................................................................................................................................... 6
MyTraffic 2010 users ......................................................................................................................... 6
F.A.Q. ................................................................................................................................................ 7
Aerosoft Maldives X - The Malè Atolls 1.10
Page 2
Introduction
The Maldives: 90,000 square kilometers of water and less than 300 square kilometers of land,
average ground level of 1.5 meters above sea level with a highest point of 2.3m above sea level,
more than 400,000 inhabitants living on less than 250 of the total 1190 islands, more than 100,000
of them on the 2.7 square km small main island "Malè" - there's probably no other country in the
world delivering more extremes than the island country in the Indian Ocean.
Still it is considered one of the most beautiful places in the world, offering some of the best hotels
and beach resorts in the world, apart from being one of the most beautiful wedding and honeymoon
locations obviously. (Tip: visit the wedding chapel just north of the Sonevagili resort and imagine
getting married there!)
Although the Maldives are more than 500 km away from the next mainland, they are a perfect
destination for every Flight Simulator enthusiast for several reasons:
• The mere beauty of the atolls and resorts. You will spend hours of time flying around the
high-detailed resorts and hotels, having just one desire: to be there in reality!
• The remoteness. With no other add-ons or performance grabbing scenery around we could
push the FSX scenery engine to its limits, offering you probably the most complex scenery
addon we've ever done.
• The international airport with its 10,500ft long runway offers not only a stunning view
approaching it but also a fantastic destination for your Aerosoft, PMDG, Wilco or JustFlight
long-haul airliners.
• The famous Maldivian air taxi services with Twin Otters buzzing around wherever you look
made the Maldives one of the most interesting areas ever since we released our DHC-6 Twin
Otter aircraft addon. Jump into the pilot seat now, there's no better way to explore the
Maldives!
Aerosoft Maldives X - The Malè Atolls 1.10
Page 3
System requirements
• Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX SP2 (or Acceleration)
• Windows XP/Vista/7 (fully updated)
• 2.0 GHz processor (Intel Core 2 Duo highly recommended)
• 2 GB RAM internal memory
• 256 MB graphic card (512 Mb highly recommended)
• PDF reader for manual
Credits
Concept: Thorsten Reichert
Programming: Thorsten Reichert
Project Management: Thorsten Reichert, Mathijs Kok
Manual, documentation: Thorsten Reichert, Mathijs Kok
Manual corrections: Christoph Beck
Installer: Raphael Jacobs
Charts: Konrad CissowskI - DigitalMapStudio - Johannesburg
Testing: Several good folks who will all be getting a free copy
Copyrights
The manual, documentation, video images, software, and all the related materials are copyrighted
and must not be copied, photocopied, translated or reduced to any electronic medium or machine
legible form, neither completely nor in part, without the previous written consent of AEROSOFT. THE
SOFTWARE IS FURNISHED «AS IS» AND IT DOES NOT COME FURNISHED WITH ANY GUARANTEE
IMPLICIT OR EXPRESS. THE AUTHOR DECLINES EVERY RESPONSIBILITY FOR CONTINGENT
MALFUNCTIONS, DECELERATION, AND ANY DRAWBACK THAT SHOULD ARISE, USING THIS
SOFTWARE.
Copyright © 2009 AEROSOFT & Thorsten Reichert. All rights reserved. Windows®XP, Vista, Windows
7 and Flight Simulator X are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in
the United States and/or other countries. All trademarks and brand names are trademarks or
registered trademarks of the respective owners.
Copyrights are serious stuff. If you find any pirated copies of this software please notify us at
support@aerosoft.com. We will make sure reports of copyrights violation are rewarded.
Aerosoft GmbH
Lindberghring 12
D-33142 Büren, Germany
www.aerosoft.com
Aerosoft Maldives X - The Malè Atolls 1.10
Page 4
Contact support
Support for this product is offered by Aerosoft. We prefer to have a support forum for the simple
reason that it is fast and efficient because customers help customers when we are sleeping:
http://www.forum.aerosoft.com and we advise the Customer Support > Scenery Discussions &
Support section for any questions on this product. This should be your first stop for any support.
If you prefer support by email do accept that this could take a bit longer as it might be sent from
persons to person and that email support is always slow on the weekends: support@aerosoft.com
We feel strongly about support. Buying one of our products gives you the right to waste our time
with questions you feel might be silly. They are not.
Removing the scenery
Never remove the product manually, always used the control panel applet to do so. Failing to do so
could create serious problems.
Performance and Display settings
The Maldivian islands and resorts were modeled as closely to their real archetypes as possible. If the
scenery settings are set to maximum (extremely dense) the look of the islands will be as real as it
gets. Of course, the more objects FSX needs to render, the more impact this has on the overall
performance. Due to the fact that there's lots of water around the Maldives we tried to push the
boundaries of FSX to its limits when it comes to the number of polygons that have to be rendered if
the settings are max'ed (the total polycount of this addon should be just below 1,000,000 (one
million that is!) polygons). To ensure good performance even with advanced weather settings and
use of AI traffic / aircraft addons, we split every island into 6 parts. The first parts include the main
objects and buildings, while
others include the tinier details
like custom 3D palms,
sunshades or other small
objects. You can adjust the
amount of objects being
displayed using the "scenery
complexity" slider in the
display-scenery menu tab.
Using "sparse" or even "very
sparse" will show you all major
objects and most 3D resorts,
but only setting the slider to
"dense" or "very dense" will
show you the whole variety of
objects. "Extremely dense" will
add even more 3D palms for a
more dense vegetation around
the beaches.
Aerosoft Maldives X - The Malè Atolls 1.10
Page 5
Autogenerated Scenery (Autogen)
As you know by now, some of the Maldivian islands are "local islands" and must not be visited by
tourists without permission. They look rather different from the tourist islands with their
accommodations and their ornate resorts. To render this accordingly we used autogen buildings on
the local islands. The scenery density on these is only influenced by the "Autogen density" slider. Just
like the custom scenery objects you can adjust the number of autogen buildings and trees on the
islands using the slider.
Most Maldives islands are in fact very lush. Walking from the beach to your apartment can make you
feel like you just entered the jungle. We've spent lots of time trying to force FSX to render the same
vegetation density, but by default FSX doesn't like this very much. To achieve the highest possible
autogen density you have to manually adjust 2 lines in your FSX.CFG file:
[TERRAIN]
...
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=4000
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=6000
Using those numbers together with "extremely dense" slider settings will give you the highest
density FSX will allow. Of course this might affect your performance, so it is recommended for up-to-
date PCs primarily.
Aerosoft Maldives X - The Malè Atolls 1.10
Page 6
Air Taxi Traffic
With 99.7% of the country consisting of pure water the main transportation means obviously are
ships. But with tourism growing into a bigger economical factor over the years the idea of an air taxi
service was born. In 1993 the "Maldivian Air Taxi" (MAT) was founded, consisting of two DHC-6 Twin
Otter aircraft. Today their fleet counts 24 Twin Otters, making it the airline operating the highest
number of those highly successful and versatile floatplanes worldwide!
1989, 4 years before MAT was founded, "Trans Maldivian Airways" (TMA) was the first (still existing)
Maldivian airline, also providing air taxi services, but using helicopters in the first years. Abandoning
helicopters and switching to the favorable Twin Otters instead they currently have 17 Twin Otters in
use, making it an equal partner to the Maldivian Air Taxi. Together both airlines carry passengers to
almost 70 different resorts all across the Maldives. They got renowned for their pilots’ flying skills as
well as for providing cabin crews on every single Twin Otter flight.
This addon includes AI aircraft, traffic files and AFD data for all MAT and TMA flights relating on
realistic schedules for all atolls, even those not included in the addon.
The Twin Otter aircraft are floatplanes, thus being unable to land on hard surfaces. Just like in reality
they don't land on Male Intl or the other airports on the Maldives. They link the Seaplane base east
of Male Intl with small seaplane bases close to the resorts and local islands. In the area of this addon
those bases can be spotted as small pontoons, where passengers disembark into small boat taxis
that carry them the last meters onto the beaches.
MyTraffic 2010 users
If you own MyTraffic 2010 you already have MAT and TMA AI traffic. If you want to avoid duplicate
traffic/schedules go to your main FSX folder and open the following subfolder:
Aerosoft/Maldives X/Maldives X - high priority/Scenery
Rename the file "Traffic_Male_FSX.bgl" to "Traffic_Male_FSX.OFF" and the custom Twin Otter traffic
will be disabled, not interfering with the MyTraffic Twin Otter traffic.
If you want to enable the custom Twin Otter AI traffic (because you disabled MyTraffic or want to
use even more traffic), just rename the file back to "Traffic_Male_FSX.bgl"
Aerosoft Maldives X - The Malè Atolls 1.10
Page 7
F.A. Q.
A: Is there a way to use the GOTO Airport option in FSX?
B: Yes, you can use VRMM for Male International airport.
Q: Why can't I see the airport apron lighting?
A: Sometimes they don't show if you approach from outside the Maldives. To load the lights open
the scenery library and click OK to reload the scenery.
Q: Ok, now I see the lighting, in fact, a bit too much of it. How can I change this?
A: Yes, this can also happen. Nobody knows exactly why FSX does some things the way it does them
sometimes. Still this issue should also be fixable by entering the scenery library and clicking ok.
Q: AI aircraft and ground vehicles are driving across the runway. Is this a bug?
A: Male is a very tight airport in FSX as well as in reality. To avoid collisions AI objects sometimes
rather use the runway instead of apron routes.
Q: Can I make autogen vegetation denser?
A: You can edit your fsx.cfg to use up to 6000 trees per cell (see "Autogenerated Scenery" above).
Q: I see lots of big cargo ships around the city island. This surely can't be realistic, can it?
A: It is in fact. Have a look at it using GoogleMaps and remember that ships are the only resonable
means of transport on the Maldives, apart from the Twin Otter airplanes, of course.
Q: I use MyTraffic, but AI aircraft disappear after landing. Why is that?
A: Male Intl has very limited parking resources. In reality they park in a way that would not be
allowed on most U.S. or European airports (see Google Earth image dating March 2008 to know
what that means). In FSX this would have lead to many unwanted side effects, so the number of
parking spots is limited to a reasonable amount. Using 50-70% of airliner traffic should be enough to
fill all positions.
Q: MyTraffic 2010 includes Twin Otter traffic for the Maldives, but all floatplane bases are crowded
with Twin Otter aircraft. Is this realistic?
A: At the "Maldivian Air Taxi" and "Trans Maldivian" headquarters you can usually find a dozen or
more Twin Otters waiting for passengers. If you should find all spots inhabited the custom traffic-file
might be active too. See "Air Taxi traffic" for details on this.
Q: How can I improve the overall performance of this addon?
A: Use the autogen and scenery sliders to adjust the scenery density. Using medium (high) settings
should give you lots of spare resources for addon aircraft, high detailed weather or AI traffic without
losing much of the scenery's beauty.
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